Yet more agony for Omran ...his big brother is dead
Tragic aftermath to image that brought home the true horror of Syria
THE older brother of the Syrian boy whose bloodied face shamed the world has died of his injuries.
The pair were pulled from rubble after an air strike destroyed their home in battle-ravaged Aleppo.
But doctors said yesterday that Omran Daqneesh’s brother Ali, ten, died of injuries to his liver and kidneys. Omran, five, had been photo- graphed in the back of an ambulance after the strike, covered in dust with a shell-shocked look in his eyes.
The image was shared around the world, leading to widespread condemnation of the Syrian civil war. Yesterday, a picture emerged of Ali, showing him lying unconscious at the M1 hospital in Aleppo, his breathing aided by a tube.
The Daqneesh family’s flat was struck on Wednesday night. Omran’s father said he had been sitting in the living room on the first floor with Omran when the building was hit.
His wife, another son and two daughters were also inside, while Ali was just outside with friends and also caught in the explosion. The father, who gave his name only as Abu Ali – meaning ‘father of Ali’ – fearing reprisals from the Syrian regime, said: ‘It is very painful to watch your children falling in front of your eyes.’
A source close to the family said: ‘They seem so lost and confused. I think they are very shocked. There have been many offers to help, even to get them out of there, but the father is refusing. He said, “I don’t want money. I don’t want help.”’
Russia has denied being behind the strike on the Qaterji district which killed at least eight.
IFEEL as though I’ve been kidnapped by a cult. The whole world has been taken over by Nadiya Hussain, a young woman who baked iced buns on telly. On Friday morning my ears were assaulted by her choices on Desert Island Discs (The Backstreet Boys, really?). She told host Kirsty Young that her mum would make, from scratch, eight curries a day for her six children. This left Kirsty reeling – she’s a woman who is used to ordering room service at the swanky Soho Farmhouse owned by her husband. Kirsty described her guest as someone who had ‘conjured culinary magnificence… and wit… winning the Great British Bake Off… watched by millions ’.
At 19, Nadiya had two jobs. She had an arranged marriage. She was at home with her three kids for ten years. She talked about her grandma, who would wash the children’s hair with Fairy Liquid. She wears a headscarf. She said she experiences abuse on a daily basis but that ‘there is dignity in silence’ (there was no irony in the air that she was on the radio, talking non-stop).
To Nadiya, baking is ‘sorcery’. She has in the piping bag a new BBC series about to be broadcast where she goes back to her parents’ village in Bangladesh, cookery books, novels, children’s books, a column in The Times. Good grief, she even baked a birthday cake for the Queen.
I think someone aged 31 is too young to be asked to appear on Desert Island Discs. Yes, she has a TV-friendly backstory, but who cares, really, that she is one of six, and that her mum made curry from scratch, or that her dad ‘worked really, really hard’. We’ve all been there, we’ve all been ‘pushed and shoved’. I’m one of seven; my mum never once bought a ready-meal, a coffee in a cardboard mug, or drank bottled water. I had a job aged 11 washing up in a pub. Oh, and sorcery? How hard is it to follow a recipe, put flour, eggs and sugar in a food processor, and bung the mixture in the oven?
WHY are we worshipping at this woman’s altar? Why is there no murmur of dissent? Her recipe for pecan and white chocolate blondies contains 225g of sugar – equivalent to six and a half cans of Coke.
Nadiya has said: ‘I love sweets. They are one of the four great loves of my life. I have sweets hidden inside my pillowcase so I can chew on them if I can’t get to sleep. My dentist will be horrified.’
No wonder Theresa May has abandoned any fight against obesity in children if this woman has been crowned the new Nigella. The rea- son Nadiya has the world at her feet is that we need someone like her to make us feel good about ourselves.
No matter that children are being bombed in Syria, or that we give a wide berth to any man with a beard at the airport. If we embrace Nadiya, who is tethered to her range cooker, has lovely, dark, liquid, expressive eyes, is a mum and a wife who thinks baking carrot cake is art, then we are all nice people who can live with ourselves.
Never mind that she told the Radio Times that, aged five, she used to slaughter animals. ‘Goats, sheep, cows, chicken – I can do all that. It was completely normal to us. Ducks as well.’
Like Jack Monroe, the single mum who was on benefits and posted a blog about cooking on a budget but never thought to eschew meat, Nadiya is a sacred cow, lauded because we need someone we deem ‘worthy’ to make us feel liberal, like announcing at a Notting Hill dinner party that we have lots of black friends.
I’d have loved to have someone set me up with a boyfriend; ten years at home with kids sounds like a holiday! We are all the same, aren’t we?